"We can't even make a consistent prognosis of her fate, including... whether she is alive or dead."
UPDATE JANUARY 2010 THE MCCANNS COULD HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH CHILD KIDNAPPING AND TRAFFICKING (Pt Prosecutor giving evidence in an ongoing case in Portugal where the McCanns are demanding ONE MILLION POUNDS IN DAMAGES FROM THE OFFICER WHO INVESTIGATED THEM!!!

31 Aug 2009

Kate manages a tear on the more recent Oprah Winfrey Show, who for I wonder?

What a great scoop from the McCann Files, who write the content has already been removed online by the Evening Standard citing legal reasons.

Of course the Evening Standard is yet another paper that has been forced to swell the McCann coffers (with yet another libel payout) for these hapless people supposedly investigating the disappearance of but, in reality are quite happy to ruin their own"reputations" by seeking to come up with bizarre stories such as it was a Victoria Beckham lookalike who stole Maddie to try and exculpate their increasingly desperate clients.

We have recently seen a similar attack on the hapless investigators employed by the McCanns in the Daily Mail. If this is not an example of the British Press fighting back, against "Team McCann" I do not know what is!

The public are entitled to know exactly what is being done with the money they gave to this despicable couple to "defend" themselves, so read on! And a big thank you to Nige at the McCann files for an incredible SCOOP! He has captured the online edition before it went WHOOSH or should I say got Carter Rucked! Fortunately, when Kate and Gerry McCann get charged with criminal offences, Carter Ruck will be no use to them at all!

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html

By Mark HollingsworthIssue: Friday 28 August 2009Disillusioned with the Portuguese police, Gerry and Kate McCann turned to private detectives to find their missing daughter. Instead the efforts of the private eyes served only to scare off witnesses, waste funds and raise false hopes. Mark Hollingsworth investigates the investigators.

It was billed as a 'significant development' in the exhaustive search for Madeleine McCann. At a recent dramatic press conference in London, the lead private investigator David Edgar, a retired Cheshire detective inspector, brandished an E-FIT image of an Australian woman, described her as 'a bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike', and appealed for help in tracing her. The woman was seen 'looking agitated' outside a restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine's disappearance. 'It is a strong lead', said Edgar, wearing a pin-stripe suit in front of a bank of cameras and microphones. 'Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by that point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.'

But within days reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished.

The apparent flaws in this latest development were another salutary lesson for Kate and Gerry McCann, who have relied on private investigators after the Portuguese police spent more time falsely suspecting the parents than searching for their daughter. For their relations with private detectives have been frustrating, unhappy and controversial ever since their daughter's disappearance in May 2007.

The search has been overseen by the millionaire business Brian Kennedy, 49, who set up Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, which aimed 'to procure that Madeleine's abduction is thoroughly investigated'. A straight-talking, tough, burly self-made entrepreneur and rugby fanatic, he grew up in a council flat near Tynecastle in Scotland and was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness. He started his working life as a window cleaner and by 2007 had acquired a £350 million fortune from double-glazing and home-improvement ventures. Kennedy was outraged by the police insinuations against the McCanns and, though a stranger, worked tirelessly on their behalf. 'His motivation was sincere,' said someone who worked closely with him. 'He was appalled by the Portuguese police, but he also had visions of flying in by helicopter to rescue Madeleine.'

Kennedy commissioned private detectives to conduct an investigation parallel to the one run by the Portuguese police. But his choice showed how dangerous it is when powerful and wealthy businessmen try to play detective. In September 2007, he hired Metodo 3, an agency based in Barcelona, on a six-month contract and paid it an estimated £50,000 a month. Metodo 3 was hired because of Spain's 'language and cultural connection' with Portugal. 'If we'd had big-booted Brits or, heaven forbid, Americans, we would have had doors slammed in our faces' said Clarence Mitchell, spokesperson for the McCann's at the time. 'And it's quite likely that we could have been charged with hindering the investigation as technically it's illegal in Portugal to undertake a secondary investigation.'

The agency had 35 investigators working on the case in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. A hotline was set up for the public to report sightings and suspicions, and the search focussed on Morocco. But the investigation was dogged by over-confidence and braggadocio. 'We know who took Madeleine and hope she will be home by Christmas,' boasted Metodo 3's flamboyant boss Francisco Marco. But no Madeleine materialised and their contract was not renewed.

Until now, few details have emerged about the private investigation during those crucial early months, but an investigation by ES shows that key mistakes were made, which in turn made later enquiries far more challenging.

ES has spoken to several sources close to the private investigations that took place in the first year and discovered that:

* The involvement of Brian Kennedy and his son Patrick in the operation was counter-productive, notably when they were questioned by the local police for acting suspiciously while attempting a 24-hour 'stake out'.

* The relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police had completely broken down.

* Key witnesses were questioned far too aggressively, so much so that some of them later refused to talk to the police

* Many of the investigators had little experience of the required painstaking forensic detective work.

By April 2008, nearing the first anniversary of the disappearance, Kennedy and the McCanns were desperate. And so when Henri Exton, a former undercover police officer who worked on M15 operations, and Kevin Halligen, a smooth-talking Irishman who claimed to have worked for covert British government intelligence agency GCHQ, walked through the door, their timing was perfect. Their sales pitch was classic James Bond spook-talk: everything had to be 'top secret' and 'on a need to know basis'. The operation would involve 24-hour alert systems, undercover units, satellite imagery and round-the-clock surveillance teams that would fly in at short notice. This sounded very exiting but, as one source close to the investigation told ES, it was also very expensive and ultimately unsuccessful. 'The real job at hand was old-fashioned, tedious, forensic police work rather than these boy's own, glory boy antics,' he said.

But Kennedy was impressed by the license-to-spy presentation and Exton and Halligen were hire for a fee of £100,000 per month plus expenses. Ostensibly, the contract was with Halligen's UK security company, Red Defence International Ltd, and an office was set up in Jermyn Street, in St James's. Only a tiny group of employees did the painstaking investigative work of dealing with thousands of emails and phone calls. Instead, resources were channelled into undercover operations in paedophile rings and among gypsies throughout Europe, encouraged by Kennedy. A five-man surveillance team was dispatched in Portugal, overseen by the experienced Exton, for six weeks.

Born in Belgium in 1951, Exton had been a highly effective undercover officer for the Manchester police. A maverick and dynamic figure, he successfully infiltrated gangs of football hooligans in the 1980's. While not popular among his colleagues, in 1991 he was seconded to work on MI5 undercover operations against drug dealers, gangsters and terrorists, and was later awarded the Queen's Police Medal for 'outstanding bravery'. By all accounts, the charismatic Exton was a dedicated officer. But in November 2002, the stress appeared to have overcome his judgement when he was arrested for shoplifting.

While working on an MI5 surveillance, Exton was caught leaving a tax-free shopping area at Manchester airport with a bottle of perfume he had not paid for. The police were called and he was given the option of the offence being dealt with under caution or to face prosecution. He chose a police caution and so in effect admitted his guilt. Exton was sacked, but was furious about the way he had been treated and threatened to sue MI5. He later set up his own consulting company and moved to Bury in Lancashire.

While Exton, however flawed, was the genuine article as an investigator, Halligen was a very different character. Born in Dublin in 1961, he has been described as a 'Walter Mitty figure'. He used false names to collect prospective clients at airports in order to preserve secrecy, and he called himself 'Kevin' or 'Richard' or 'Patrick' at different times to describe himself to business contacts. There appears to be no reason for all this subterfuge except that he thought this was what agents did. A conspiracy theorist and lover of the secret world, he is obsessed by surveillance gadgets and even installed a covert camera to spy on his own employees. He claimed to have worked for GCHQ, but in fact he was employed by the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) as head of defence systems in the rather less glamorous field of new information technology, researching the use of 'special batteries'. He told former colleagues and potential girlfriends that he used to work for MI5, MI6 and the CIA. He also claimed that he was nearly kidnapped by the IRA, was involved in the first Gulf War and had been a freefall parachutist.

Very little of this is true. What is true is that Halligen has a degree in electronics, worked on the fringes of the intelligence community while at AEA and does understand government communications. He could also be an astonishingly persuasive, engaging and charming individual. Strikingly self-confident and articulate, he could be generous and clubbable. 'He was very good company but only when it suited him,' says one friend. 'He kept people in compartments.'

After leaving the AEA, Halligen set up Red Defence International Ltd as an international security and political risk company, advising clients on the risks involved in investing and doing business in unstable, war-torn and corrupt countries. He worked closely with political risk companies and was a persuasive advocate of IT security. In 2006, he struck gold when hired by Trafigura, the Dutch commodities trading company. Executives were imprisoned in the Ivory Coast after toxic waste was dumped in landfills near its biggest city Abidjan. Trafigura was blamed and hired Red Defence International at vast expense to help with the negotiations to release its executives. A Falcon business jet was rented for several months during the operation and it was Halligen's first taste of the good life. The case only ended when Trafigura paid $197 million to the government of the Ivory Coast to secure the release of the prisoners.

Halligen made a fortune from Trafigura and was suddenly flying everywhere first-class, staying at the Lansborough and Stafford hotels in London and The Willard hotel in Washington DC for months at a time. In 2007 he set up Oakley International Group and registered at the offices of the prestigious law firm Patton Boggs, in Washington DC, as an international security company. He was now strutting the stage as a self-proclaimed international spy expert and joined the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge, where he met Exton.

During the Madeleine investigation, Halligen spent vast amounts of time in the HeyJo bar in the basement of the Abracadabra Club near his Jermyn Street office. Armed with a clutch of unregistered mobile phones and a Blackberry, the bar was in effect his office. 'He was there virtually the whole day,' a former colleague told ES. 'He had an amazing tolerance for alcohol and a prodigious memory and so occasionally he would have amazing bursts of intelligence, lucidity and insights. They were very rare but they did happen.'

When not imbibing in St James's, Halligen was in the United States, trying to drum up investors for Oakley International. On 15 August 2008, at the height of the McCann investigation crisis, he persuaded Andre Hollis, a former US Drug enforcement agency official, to write out an $80,000 cheque to Oakley in return for a ten per cent share-holding. The money was then transferred into the private accounts of Halligen and his girlfriend Shirin Trachiotis to finance a holiday in Italy, according to Hollis. In a $6 million lawsuit filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, Hollis alleges that Halligen 'received monies for Oakley's services rendered and deposited the same into his personal accounts' and 'repeatedly and systematically depleted funds from Oakley's bank accounts for inappropriate personal expenses'.

Hollis was not the only victim. Mark Aspinall, a respected lawyer who worked closely with Halligen, invested £500,000 in Oakley and lost the lot. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit in Washington DC against Halligen claiming $1.4 million in damages. The finances of Oakley International are in chaos and numerous employees, specialist consultants and contractors have not been paid. Some of them now face financial ruin.

Meanwhile, Exton was running the surveillance teams in Portugal and often paying his operatives upfront, so would occasionally be out-of-pocket because Halligen had not transferred funds. Exton genuinely believed that progress was being made and substantial and credible reports on child trafficking were submitted. But by mid-August 2008, Kennedy and Gerry McCann were increasingly concerned by an absence of details of how the money was being spent. At one meeting, Halligen was asked how many men constituted a surveillance team and he produced a piece of paper on which he wrote 'between one and ten'. But he then refused to say how many were working and how much they were being paid.

While Kennedy and Gerry McCann accepted that the mission was extremely difficult and some secrecy was necessary, Halligen was charging very high rates and expenses. And eyebrows were raised when all the money was paid to Oakley International, solely owned and managed by Halligen. One invoice, seen by ES, shows that for 'accrued expenses to May 5, 2008' (just one month into the contract), Oakley charged $74,155. The 'point of contact' was Halligen who provided a UK mobile telephone number.

While Kennedy was ready to accept Halligen at face value, Gerry McCann – sharp, focused and intelligent – was more sceptical. The contract with Oakley International and Halligen was terminated by the end of September 2008, after £500,000-plus expenses had been spent.

For the McCanns it was a bitter experience, Exton has returned to Cheshire and, like so many people, is owed money by Halligen. As for Halligen, he has gone into hiding, leaving a trail of debt and numerous former business associates and creditors looking for him. He was last seen in January of this year in Rome, drinking and spending prodigiously at the Hilton Cavalieri and Excelsior hotels. He is now believed by private investigators, who have been searching for him to serve papers on behalf of creditors, to be in the UK and watching his back. Meanwhile, in the eye of the storm, the McCanns continue the search for their lost daughter.

Disillusioned with the Portuguese police, Gerry and Kate McCann turned to private detectives to find their missing daughter. Instead the efforts of the private eyes served only to scare off witnesses, waste funds and raise false hopes. Mark Hollingsworth investigates the investigators.

by Mark Hollingsworth*

It was billed as a ‘significant development’ in the exhaustive search for Madeleine McCann. At a recent dramatic press conference in London, the lead private investigator David Edgar, a retired Cheshire detective inspector, brandished an E-FIT image of an Australian woman, described her as ‘a bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’, and appealed for help in tracing her. The woman was seen ‘looking agitated’ outside a restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine’s disappearance. ‘It is a strong lead’, said Edgar, wearing a pin-stripe suit in front of a bank of cameras and microphones. ‘Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by that point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.’

But within days reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished.

The apparent flaws in this latest development were another salutary lesson for Kate and Gerry McCann, who have relied on private investigators after the Portuguese police spent more time falsely suspecting the parents than searching for their daughter. For their relations with private detectives have been frustrating, unhappy and controversial ever since their daughter’s disappearance in May 2007.

The search has been overseen by the millionaire business Brian Kennedy, 49, who set up Madeleine’s Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, which aimed ‘to procure that Madeleine’s abduction is thoroughly investigated’. A straight-talking, tough, burly self-made entrepreneur and rugby fanatic, he grew up in a council flat near Tynecastle in Scotland and was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness. He started his working life as a window cleaner and by 2007 had acquired a £350 million fortune from double-glazing and home-improvement ventures. Kennedy was outraged by the police insinuations against the McCanns and, though a stranger, worked tirelessly on their behalf. ‘His motivation was sincere,’ said someone who worked closely with him. ‘He was appalled by the Portuguese police, but he also had visions of flying in by helicopter to rescue Madeleine.’

Kennedy commissioned private detectives to conduct an investigation parallel to the one run by the Portuguese police. But his choice showed how dangerous it is when powerful and wealthy businessmen try to play detective. In September 2007, he hired Metodo 3, an agency based in Barcelona, on a six-month contract and paid it an estimated £50,000 a month. Metodo 3 was hired because of Spain’s ‘language and cultural connection’ with Portugal. ‘If we’d had big-booted Brits or, heaven forbid, Americans, we would have had doors slammed in our faces’ said Clarence Mitchell, spokesperson for the McCann’s at the time. ‘And it’s quite likely that we could have been charged with hindering the investigation as technically it’s illegal in Portugal to undertake a secondary investigation.

The agency had 35 investigators working on the case in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. A hotline was set up for the public to report sightings and suspicions, and the search focussed on Morocco. But the investigation was dogged by over-confidence and braggadocio. ‘We know who took Madeleine and hope she will be home by Christmas,’ boasted Metodo 3’s flamboyant boss Francisco Marco. But no Madeleine materialised and their contract was not renewed.

ES has spoken to several sources close to the private investigations that took place in the first year and discovered that:

The involvement of Brian Kennedy and his son Patrick in the operation was counter-productive, notably when they were questioned by the local police for acting suspiciously while attempting a 24-hour ‘stake out’.

The relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police had completely broken down.

Key witnesses were questioned far too aggressively, so much so that some of them later refused to talk to the police.

Many of the investigators had little experience of the required painstaking forensic detective work.

By April 2008, nearing the first anniversary of the disappearance, Kennedy and the McCanns were desperate. And so when Henri Exton, a former undercover police officer who worked on M15 operations, and Kevin Halligen, a smooth-talking Irishman who claimed to have worked for covert British government intelligence agency GCHQ, walked through the door, their timing was perfect. Their sales pitch was classic James Bond spook-talk: everything had to be ‘top secret’ and ‘on a need to know basis’. The operation would involve 24-hour alert systems, undercover units, satellite imagery and round-the-clock surveillance teams that would fly in at short notice. This sounded very exiting but, as one source close to the investigation told ES, it was also very expensive and ultimately unsuccessful. ‘The real job at hand was old-fashioned, tedious, forensic police work rather than these boy’s own, glory boy antic,’ he said.

But Kennedy was impressed by the license-to-spy presentation and Exton and Halligen were hire for a fee of £100,000 per month plus expenses. Ostensibly, the contract was with Halligen’s UK security company, Red Defence International Ltd, and an office was set up in Jermyn Street, in St James’s. Only a tiny group of employees did the painstaking investigative work of dealing with thousands of emails and phone calls. Instead, resources were channelled into undercover operations in paedophile rings and among gypsies throughout Europe, encouraged by Kennedy. A five-man surveillance team was dispatched in Portugal, overseen by the experienced Exton, for six weeks.

Born in Belgium in 1951, Exton had been a highly effective undercover officer for the Manchester police. A maverick and dynamic figure, he successfully infiltrated gangs of football hooligans in the 1980’s. While not popular among his colleagues, in 1991 he was seconded to work on MI5 undercover operations against drug dealers, gangsters and terrorists, and was later awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for ‘outstanding bravery’. By all accounts, the charismatic Exton was a dedicated officer. But in November 2002, the stress appeared to have overcome his judgement when he was arrested for shoplifting.

While working on an MI5 surveillance, Exton was caught leaving a tax-free shopping area at Manchester airport with a bottle of perfume he had not paid for. The police were called and he was given the option of the offence being dealt with under caution or to face prosecution. He chose a police caution and so in effect admitted his guilt. Exton was sacked, but was furious about the way he had been treated and threatened to sue MI5. He later set up his own consulting company and moved to Bury in Lancashire.

While Exton, however flawed, was the genuine article as an investigator, Halligen was a very different character. Born in Dublin in 1961, he has been described as a ‘Walter Mitty figure’. He used false names to collect prospective clients at airports in order to preserve secrecy, and he called himself ‘Kevin’ or ‘Richard’ or ‘Patrick’ at different times to describe himself to business contacts. There appears to be no reason for all this subterfuge except that he thought this was what agents did. A conspiracy theorist and lover of the secret world, he is obsessed by surveillance gadgets and even installed a covert camera to spy on his own employees. He claimed to have worked for GCHQ, but in fact he was employed by the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) as head of defence systems in the rather less glamorous field of new information technology, researching the use of ‘special batteries’. He told former colleagues and potential girlfriends that he used to work for MI5, MI6 and the CIA. He also claimed that he was nearly kidnapped by the IRA, was involved in the first Gulf War and had been a freefall parachutist.

Very little of this is true. What is true is that Halligen has a degree in electronics, worked on the fringes of the intelligence community while at AEA and does understand government communications. He could also be an astonishingly persuasive, engaging and charming individual. Strikingly self-confident and articulate, he could be generous and clubbable. ‘He was very good company but only when it suited him’ says one friend. He kept people in compartments.’

After leaving the AEA, Halligen set up Red Defence International Ltd as an international security and political risk company, advising clients on the risks involved in investing and doing business in unstable, war-torn and corrupt countries. He worked closely with political risk companies and was a persuasive advocate of IT security. In 2006, he struck gold when hired by Trafigura, the Dutch commodities trading company. Executives were imprisoned in the Ivory Coast after toxic waste was dumped in landfills near its biggest city Abidjan. Trafigura was blamed and hired Red Defence International at vast expense to help with the negotiations to release its executives. A Falcon business jet was rented for several months during the operation and it was Halligen’s first taste of the good life. The case only ended when Trafigura paid $197 million to the government of the Ivory Coast to secure the release of the prisoners.

During the Madeleine investigation, Halligen spent vast amounts of time in the HeyJo bar in the basement of the Abracadabra Club near his Jermyn Street office. Armed with a clutch of unregistered mobile phones and a Blackberry, the bar was in effect his office. ‘He was there virtually the whole day,’ a former colleague told ES. ‘He had an amazing tolerance for alcohol and a prodigious memory and so occasionally he would have amazing bursts of intelligence, lucidity and insights. They were very rare but they did happen.’

When not imbibing in St James’s, Halligen was in the United States, trying to drum up investors for Oakley International. On 15 August 2008, at the height of the McCann investigation crisis, he persuaded Andre Hollis, a former US Drug enforcement agency official, to write out an $80.000 cheque to Oakley in return for a ten per cent share-holding. The money was then transferred into the private accounts of Halligen and his girlfriend Shirin Trachiotis to finance a holiday in Italy, according to Hollis. In a $6 million lawsuit filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, Hollis alleges that Halligen ‘received monies for Oakley’s services rendered and deposited the same into his personal accounts’ and ‘repeatedly and systematically depleted funds from Oakley’s bank accounts for inappropriate personal expenses’.

Hollis was not the only victim. Mark Aspinall, a respected lawyer who worked closely with Halligen, invested £500,000 in Oakley and lost the lot. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit in Washington DC against Halligen claiming $1.4 million in damages. The finances of Oakley International are in chaos and numerous employees, specialist consultants and contractors have not been paid. Some of them now face financial ruin.

Meanwhile, Exton was running the surveillance teams in Portugal and often paying his operatives upfront, so would occasionally be out-of-pocket because Halligen had not transferred funds. Exton genuinely believed that progress was being made and substantial and credible reports on child trafficking were submitted. But by mid-August 2008, Kennedy and Gerry McCann were increasingly concerned by an absence of details of how the money was being spent. At one meeting, Halligen was asked how many men constituted a surveillance team and he produced a piece of paper on which he wrote ‘between one and ten’. But he then refused to say how many were working and how much they were being paid.

While Kennedy and Gerry McCann accepted that the mission was extremely difficult and some secrecy was necessary, Halligen was charging very high rates and expenses. And eyebrows were raised when all the money was paid to Oakley International, solely owned and managed by Halligen. One invoice, seen by ES, shows that for ‘accrued expenses to May 5, 2008’ (just one month into the contract), Oakley charged $74,155. The ‘point of contact’ was Halligen who provided a UK mobile telephone number.

For the McCanns it was a bitter experience, Exton has returned to Cheshire and, like so many people, is owed money by Halligen. As for Halligen, he has gone into hiding, leaving a trail of debt and numerous former business associates and creditors looking for him. He was last seen in January of this year in Rome, drinking and spending prodigiously at the Hilton Cavalieri and Excelsior hotels. He is now believed by private investigators, who have been searching for him to serve papers on behalf of creditors, to be in the UK and watching his back. Meanwhile, in the eye of the storm, the McCanns continue the search for their lost daughter.

*Mark Hollingsworth is best known for his investigations into Mark Thatcher and also MI5. He worked for Granada TV’s ‘World In Action’ programme for five years. He is the author of nine books, notably ‘Thatcher’s Fortunes: The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher’, ‘Defending the Realm: MI5 and International Terrorism’ and ‘Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud’. His new book, ‘Londongrad: From Russia with Cash, The Inside Story of the Oligarchs’, will be published in July 2009. He also contributes regularly to the London Evening Standard and most national newspapers.

Disillusioned with the Portuguese police, Gerry and Kate McCann turned to private detectives to find their missing daughter. Instead the efforts of the private eyes served only to scare off witnesses, waste funds and raise false hopes. Mark Hollingsworth investigates the investigators.

by Mark Hollingsworth*

It was billed as a ‘significant development’ in the exhaustive search for Madeleine McCann. At a recent dramatic press conference in London, the lead private investigator David Edgar, a retired Cheshire detective inspector, brandished an E-FIT image of an Australian woman, described her as ‘a bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’, and appealed for help in tracing her. The woman was seen ‘looking agitated’ outside a restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine’s disappearance. ‘It is a strong lead’, said Edgar, wearing a pin-stripe suit in front of a bank of cameras and microphones. ‘Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by that point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.’

But within days reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished.

The apparent flaws in this latest development were another salutary lesson for Kate and Gerry McCann, who have relied on private investigators after the Portuguese police spent more time falsely suspecting the parents than searching for their daughter. For their relations with private detectives have been frustrating, unhappy and controversial ever since their daughter’s disappearance in May 2007.

The search has been overseen by the millionaire business Brian Kennedy, 49, who set up Madeleine’s Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, which aimed ‘to procure that Madeleine’s abduction is thoroughly investigated’. A straight-talking, tough, burly self-made entrepreneur and rugby fanatic, he grew up in a council flat near Tynecastle in Scotland and was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness. He started his working life as a window cleaner and by 2007 had acquired a £350 million fortune from double-glazing and home-improvement ventures. Kennedy was outraged by the police insinuations against the McCanns and, though a stranger, worked tirelessly on their behalf. ‘His motivation was sincere,’ said someone who worked closely with him. ‘He was appalled by the Portuguese police, but he also had visions of flying in by helicopter to rescue Madeleine.’

Kennedy commissioned private detectives to conduct an investigation parallel to the one run by the Portuguese police. But his choice showed how dangerous it is when powerful and wealthy businessmen try to play detective. In September 2007, he hired Metodo 3, an agency based in Barcelona, on a six-month contract and paid it an estimated £50,000 a month. Metodo 3 was hired because of Spain’s ‘language and cultural connection’ with Portugal. ‘If we’d had big-booted Brits or, heaven forbid, Americans, we would have had doors slammed in our faces’ said Clarence Mitchell, spokesperson for the McCann’s at the time. ‘And it’s quite likely that we could have been charged with hindering the investigation as technically it’s illegal in Portugal to undertake a secondary investigation.

The agency had 35 investigators working on the case in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. A hotline was set up for the public to report sightings and suspicions, and the search focussed on Morocco. But the investigation was dogged by over-confidence and braggadocio. ‘We know who took Madeleine and hope she will be home by Christmas,’ boasted Metodo 3’s flamboyant boss Francisco Marco. But no Madeleine materialised and their contract was not renewed.

ES has spoken to several sources close to the private investigations that took place in the first year and discovered that:

The involvement of Brian Kennedy and his son Patrick in the operation was counter-productive, notably when they were questioned by the local police for acting suspiciously while attempting a 24-hour ‘stake out’.

The relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police had completely broken down.

Key witnesses were questioned far too aggressively, so much so that some of them later refused to talk to the police.

Many of the investigators had little experience of the required painstaking forensic detective work.

By April 2008, nearing the first anniversary of the disappearance, Kennedy and the McCanns were desperate. And so when Henri Exton, a former undercover police officer who worked on M15 operations, and Kevin Halligen, a smooth-talking Irishman who claimed to have worked for covert British government intelligence agency GCHQ, walked through the door, their timing was perfect. Their sales pitch was classic James Bond spook-talk: everything had to be ‘top secret’ and ‘on a need to know basis’. The operation would involve 24-hour alert systems, undercover units, satellite imagery and round-the-clock surveillance teams that would fly in at short notice. This sounded very exiting but, as one source close to the investigation told ES, it was also very expensive and ultimately unsuccessful. ‘The real job at hand was old-fashioned, tedious, forensic police work rather than these boy’s own, glory boy antic,’ he said.

But Kennedy was impressed by the license-to-spy presentation and Exton and Halligen were hire for a fee of £100,000 per month plus expenses. Ostensibly, the contract was with Halligen’s UK security company, Red Defence International Ltd, and an office was set up in Jermyn Street, in St James’s. Only a tiny group of employees did the painstaking investigative work of dealing with thousands of emails and phone calls. Instead, resources were channelled into undercover operations in paedophile rings and among gypsies throughout Europe, encouraged by Kennedy. A five-man surveillance team was dispatched in Portugal, overseen by the experienced Exton, for six weeks.

Born in Belgium in 1951, Exton had been a highly effective undercover officer for the Manchester police. A maverick and dynamic figure, he successfully infiltrated gangs of football hooligans in the 1980’s. While not popular among his colleagues, in 1991 he was seconded to work on MI5 undercover operations against drug dealers, gangsters and terrorists, and was later awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for ‘outstanding bravery’. By all accounts, the charismatic Exton was a dedicated officer. But in November 2002, the stress appeared to have overcome his judgement when he was arrested for shoplifting.

While working on an MI5 surveillance, Exton was caught leaving a tax-free shopping area at Manchester airport with a bottle of perfume he had not paid for. The police were called and he was given the option of the offence being dealt with under caution or to face prosecution. He chose a police caution and so in effect admitted his guilt. Exton was sacked, but was furious about the way he had been treated and threatened to sue MI5. He later set up his own consulting company and moved to Bury in Lancashire.

While Exton, however flawed, was the genuine article as an investigator, Halligen was a very different character. Born in Dublin in 1961, he has been described as a ‘Walter Mitty figure’. He used false names to collect prospective clients at airports in order to preserve secrecy, and he called himself ‘Kevin’ or ‘Richard’ or ‘Patrick’ at different times to describe himself to business contacts. There appears to be no reason for all this subterfuge except that he thought this was what agents did. A conspiracy theorist and lover of the secret world, he is obsessed by surveillance gadgets and even installed a covert camera to spy on his own employees. He claimed to have worked for GCHQ, but in fact he was employed by the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) as head of defence systems in the rather less glamorous field of new information technology, researching the use of ‘special batteries’. He told former colleagues and potential girlfriends that he used to work for MI5, MI6 and the CIA. He also claimed that he was nearly kidnapped by the IRA, was involved in the first Gulf War and had been a freefall parachutist.

Very little of this is true. What is true is that Halligen has a degree in electronics, worked on the fringes of the intelligence community while at AEA and does understand government communications. He could also be an astonishingly persuasive, engaging and charming individual. Strikingly self-confident and articulate, he could be generous and clubbable. ‘He was very good company but only when it suited him’ says one friend. He kept people in compartments.’

After leaving the AEA, Halligen set up Red Defence International Ltd as an international security and political risk company, advising clients on the risks involved in investing and doing business in unstable, war-torn and corrupt countries. He worked closely with political risk companies and was a persuasive advocate of IT security. In 2006, he struck gold when hired by Trafigura, the Dutch commodities trading company. Executives were imprisoned in the Ivory Coast after toxic waste was dumped in landfills near its biggest city Abidjan. Trafigura was blamed and hired Red Defence International at vast expense to help with the negotiations to release its executives. A Falcon business jet was rented for several months during the operation and it was Halligen’s first taste of the good life. The case only ended when Trafigura paid $197 million to the government of the Ivory Coast to secure the release of the prisoners.

During the Madeleine investigation, Halligen spent vast amounts of time in the HeyJo bar in the basement of the Abracadabra Club near his Jermyn Street office. Armed with a clutch of unregistered mobile phones and a Blackberry, the bar was in effect his office. ‘He was there virtually the whole day,’ a former colleague told ES. ‘He had an amazing tolerance for alcohol and a prodigious memory and so occasionally he would have amazing bursts of intelligence, lucidity and insights. They were very rare but they did happen.’

When not imbibing in St James’s, Halligen was in the United States, trying to drum up investors for Oakley International. On 15 August 2008, at the height of the McCann investigation crisis, he persuaded Andre Hollis, a former US Drug enforcement agency official, to write out an $80.000 cheque to Oakley in return for a ten per cent share-holding. The money was then transferred into the private accounts of Halligen and his girlfriend Shirin Trachiotis to finance a holiday in Italy, according to Hollis. In a $6 million lawsuit filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, Hollis alleges that Halligen ‘received monies for Oakley’s services rendered and deposited the same into his personal accounts’ and ‘repeatedly and systematically depleted funds from Oakley’s bank accounts for inappropriate personal expenses’.

Hollis was not the only victim. Mark Aspinall, a respected lawyer who worked closely with Halligen, invested £500,000 in Oakley and lost the lot. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit in Washington DC against Halligen claiming $1.4 million in damages. The finances of Oakley International are in chaos and numerous employees, specialist consultants and contractors have not been paid. Some of them now face financial ruin.

Meanwhile, Exton was running the surveillance teams in Portugal and often paying his operatives upfront, so would occasionally be out-of-pocket because Halligen had not transferred funds. Exton genuinely believed that progress was being made and substantial and credible reports on child trafficking were submitted. But by mid-August 2008, Kennedy and Gerry McCann were increasingly concerned by an absence of details of how the money was being spent. At one meeting, Halligen was asked how many men constituted a surveillance team and he produced a piece of paper on which he wrote ‘between one and ten’. But he then refused to say how many were working and how much they were being paid.

While Kennedy and Gerry McCann accepted that the mission was extremely difficult and some secrecy was necessary, Halligen was charging very high rates and expenses. And eyebrows were raised when all the money was paid to Oakley International, solely owned and managed by Halligen. One invoice, seen by ES, shows that for ‘accrued expenses to May 5, 2008’ (just one month into the contract), Oakley charged $74,155. The ‘point of contact’ was Halligen who provided a UK mobile telephone number.

For the McCanns it was a bitter experience, Exton has returned to Cheshire and, like so many people, is owed money by Halligen. As for Halligen, he has gone into hiding, leaving a trail of debt and numerous former business associates and creditors looking for him. He was last seen in January of this year in Rome, drinking and spending prodigiously at the Hilton Cavalieri and Excelsior hotels. He is now believed by private investigators, who have been searching for him to serve papers on behalf of creditors, to be in the UK and watching his back. Meanwhile, in the eye of the storm, the McCanns continue the search for their lost daughter.

*Mark Hollingsworth is best known for his investigations into Mark Thatcher and also MI5. He worked for Granada TV’s ‘World In Action’ programme for five years. He is the author of nine books, notably ‘Thatcher’s Fortunes: The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher’, ‘Defending the Realm: MI5 and International Terrorism’ and ‘Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud’. His new book, ‘Londongrad: From Russia with Cash, The Inside Story of the Oligarchs’, will be published in July 2009. He also contributes regularly to the London Evening Standard and most national newspapers.

A second image in the police files was generated from the account of British ex-pat Lance Purser, who said he thought the man he saw may have had "psychological problems", but the sighting led nowhere.

Detectives went on to name the McCanns as formal suspects in the disappearance of their daughter. But officers announced they were were no longer suspects when they closed the case.

Lawyers for the McCanns, both 40, were given access to the police files last week. They are now studying the papers for fresh leads the couple's private detectives can follow up, their spokesman says.Back123456789101112Next

Madeleine's parents 'left patio doors unlocked'Last updated at 16:53 13 May 2007Police in Portugal are working on the theory that Madeleine was snatched through patio doors left unlocked by her parents as they dined just 40 yards away.Until now, it was believed that shutters at the front of the apartment had been jemmied open by the little girl's abductors.But Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, spokesman for the investigation, has confided in British former Chief Inspector Albert Kirby that neither the windows nor their shutters had been tampered with.Mr Kirby, who led the investigation into the abduction and murder of Liverpool-born toddler Jamie Bulger, revealed that it was the unlocked patio doors of the apartment that allowed Madeleine to be taken away swiftly and quietly.Sources close to the investigation also confirmed that police attention was solely focused on the back of the apartment, which leads on to a small garden easily accessible from a public path through a gateway.Gerry and Kate McCann would have used the patio doors as they checked on their daughter and her twin siblings during their meal near the Mark Warner holiday complex swimming pool and it is these doors that were left unsecured.The McCanns and all their friends on the holiday left their patio doors open throughout the evenings for fear of fire.Mr Kirby told The Mail on Sunday: "I had a very interesting chat with the officer in charge. The window shutters are not an issue."Their mechanism makes them almost impossible to open. The door was left unlocked. They did that every night."I think the police have a very specific understanding of what they are looking for."Mr Kirby believes Portuguese police will solve the case of the missing toddler within days. He said: "I am impressed by the investigation. I have a feeling we will have a result by the end of the next week."

23 Aug 2009

A mother who only cares about defending herself, on British TV 1 May 2008, whilst still a suspect in the Portuguese investigation, telling us about how Maddie "just moved on" from complaining to her parents about being left alone to cry with her twin baby brother and sister. Just heartbreaking and they still have care of those twins..but have assured they would never leave them again..

See another excellent analysis, video of the McCanns talking about the crying incident and contrasting what they said in official police statements on 4 May 2007 at:

The Crying Incident#fullpost {display:none;}Last Monday,‘Stevo’ posted an excellent video about the Madeleine case – or rather, about the McCann case, because Madeleine is, after all, only a ‘story’, in the words of Mr Mitchell.The video contains a very impressive passage about a little episode that was reported by Mrs Fenn, the lady that lives in the apartment directly above apartment 5A, in her witness statement to the Polícia Judiciária, on the 20th of August 2007, as follows:“She [Pamela Fenn] thus mentions that on Tuesday, the 1st of May 2007, and while alone at home, at around 10.30 p.m. she heard a child crying, that by the sound of it seemed to her to be coming from a young child and not from a two-year-old or younger baby. Simultaneously with the crying that lasted for about one hour and 15 minutes, and became increasingly more intense and expressive, the child screamed “daddy – daddy”, the deponent has no doubt that the crying came from the lower floor. At around 11.45 p.m., which is to say, one hour and fifteen after it started, she felt the parents arriving, but didn’t see them, nevertheless she heard the balcony door opening, which she noticed because she was quite worried, given the fact that the crying lasted for over an hour and increased steadily. When asked, she said that she didn’t know the reason for the crying, maybe a nightmare, or any other destabilising factor. She adds that as soon as the parents entered the house, the child stopped crying.” in Process 201/07.0 GALGS, pages 2412-2413Now, instead of following diversionary tactics that lead us to faraway places like Australia, fun as it could be, maybe it would be interesting to take another look closer at home. Literally.The witness statements that were given to the PJ by the McCann couple and their friends are widely available on the internet, duly translated by so many people who have offered their time and knowledge and did not receive thousands of pounds from any Fund for their work. As anyone can verify, the ‘crying incident’ is briefly mentioned in Kate and Gerry McCann’s statements:“Between April 28, the day of arrival, and the time at which the disappearance was detected, the deponent [Kate McCann] said that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, except that on the morning of Thursday, May 3rd, MADELEINE asked the deponent why they hadn’t come into the room when the twins were crying. The interviewee had not gone into the room because she hadn’t heard anything, yet found her daughter’s comment strange, even because it was the first time that she had made it.” Kate McCann's statement on 04.05.2007 in Process 201/07.0 GALGS, page 59“Between April 28, the day of arrival, and the time at which the disappearance was detected, the deponent [Gerald McCann said that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, except that on the morning of Thursday, May 3rd, MADELEINE asked the deponent why he had not come into the room when the twins were crying. The interviewee had not gone into the room because he hadn’t heard anything, yet found his daughter’s comment strange, even because it was the first time that she had made it.” Gerry McCann's statement on 04.05.2007 in Process 201/07.0 GALGS, page 35/36Now maybe you have noticed the same thing that I did: the McCanns told the police the exact same episode, mentioning the exact same details – that the twins had been crying – in a manner so similar that their witness statements read almost identically. We’ll retain this curious detail for later use.Thank goodness we have the McCanns' spokesperson, former Media Monitoring Unit director Clarence Mitchell, that paragon of truth, to assure us that the McCanns were absolutely truthful in these initial statements:“The only reason this has come out is because of Kate and Gerry’s utter honesty in their original statements.” in The Telegraph, on April 10, 2008So truthful, that Mr McCann even reveals what I can only presume to be the truth about his wife’s visit to the apartment:“At around 22H00 it was his wife KATE who came to check on the children. She entered the apartment through the door, using the key, and immediately discovered that the door to her children’s bedroom was completely open, the window also open, the shutters up and the curtains apart. The side door [patio door] that opens into the living room and as mentioned earlier was left unlocked, was closed.” in Process 201/07.0 GALGS, page 37Now that opens a whole different can of worms, but we’ll leave it for another day, when the Australian-Spanish-Swedish hullabaloo dies down and news are slow again.“It is very curious that this is being released now, having been sitting in the police files for 11 months. The timing of this is frankly suspicious.” Clarence Mitchell, cited in The Telegraph, on April 10, 2008Mr Mitchell is right about one thing, though: The timing was suspicious, especially because at the same time that the news was being broken live on tv by a Spanish journalist on a morning talk show on Telecinco, Fiona Payne was being interviewed by DC Messiah, at the Leicestershire Police Headquarters in Enderby, telling him in considerable detail how Kate McCann had mentioned the crying incident over dinner, on the 3rd of May 2007, at the Tapas Bar.And also at the same time, the McCanns were holding a press conference in Brussels, to push their petition that hijacked an already existing project in the European Parliament for a missing child alert system.The 10th of April, 2008, was a busy day, by any measure.But let’s go back to Mrs Fenn for a moment. She stated that on Tuesday, the 1st of May, two days before Madeleine vanished without a trace, she heard a child – one child – crying in the apartment downstairs, for over an hour. She said that the crying had stopped exactly when the parents entered the apartment.Now I’m the first one to acknowledge that all children are different, and although my own experience tells me that a child that has been crying incessantly for over an hour does not stop crying instantly, as if it had a switch, I’m not going to say that this is impossible. What I do find rather strange, is that the parents never heard the child’s cries as they approached the apartment – while Mrs Fenn upstairs was worried enough about the situation to call a friend for advice -, nor did they notice anything unusual inside the apartment after entering it. Not a sigh, not a whimper, nothing. Or so they say, in their truthful initial statements.Of course, their truthful initial statements mention the episode as having taken place on Wednesday night. Nobody asked them about Tuesday.Fast forward to late November 2007The McCanns are back in England. The Portuguese investigation is stalled, swamped with bureaucratic issues concerning the questioning of the so-called ‘Tapas Seven’, under the rogatory letters that take months to be accepted by the Home Office. A meeting at a hotel in Rothley reunites the couple with their friends, for the first time after the events in Luz. The press reports that the rogatory interviews are “weeks away”.In fact, they would only take place in April, more precisely between the 8th and the 11th of April, 2008. A team from the PJ, led by Paulo Rebelo, then the coordinator of the CID in Portimão, travelled to Leicester to attend the interviews, but returned to the Algarve in the early hours of the 11th of April. They missed the questioning of what would be considered a key witness in any criminal case: David Payne, allegedly the last person, apart from the arguidos, to see Madeleine alive.According to the transcripts of these interviews, it was Rachael Mampilly who first mentioned the crying incident to the British police, during the morning of the 9th of April:“Kate did, when we sat down at the table on the Thursday night, Kate said that erm, Madeleine and Sean had cried, said they’d been crying, erm and you know wondered where she was, or wondered where you know, Mummy and Daddy were, erm I mean this was kind of after Madeleine disappeared, we talked, she mentioned that when we sat at the table on Thursday and then after Madeleine had disappeared, erm McCANN’s said, oh well I wonder whether on the Wednesday, you know somebody had tried to get in perhaps or had got in and they’d seen something, erm you know and I was next door in the apartment but I mean I didn’t hear any, well you know, I didn’t hear anything, I could well have been asleep, erm you could hear quite a lot through the apartments because Grace, she always wakes up early but because she seemed to have diarrhoea every night, she’d wake up sort of six o’clock most mornings and we’d always have to put her in the, in the shower or in the bath first thing, and Gerry and Kate would always hear that and so you know, most of the comments first thing in the morning would be like, oh so Grace was up early again, she’d be invariably screaming her head off, so.” in Rachael Mampilly’s rogatory statement on 09.04.2008This ‘crying incident’ seems to have been a rather significant episode for Kate and Gerry McCann. Significant enough to be mentioned at dinner, apparently for no reason, and to be offered by the couple, separately and almost in the same words, to the PJ in their very first statements.Another curious detail is the fact that Rachael’s husband, Matthew Oldfield, states that Rachael stayed home on the Tuesday night, contradicting his own wife and placing her in the apartment next door to the McCanns’ on the night that Mrs Fenn reported hearing the crying:“Rachael was sort of, erm, became unwell the Tuesday evening, erm, and she stayed in the apartment, yeah.” in Matthew Oldfield’s rogatory statement on 09.04.2008Confused?The next morning, while the McCanns were conveniently concentrating the world media’s attention on their visit to Brussels, and Fiona Payne was repeating the story of the crying incident to DC Ivor Messiah at the Leicestershire Police Headquarters, a well-known Spanish journalist, Nacho Abad, was breaking the news live on ‘El Programa de Ana Rosa’, a morning talk show on Spanish channel Telecinco.“’El Programa de Ana Rosa’ has obtained, in first hand, and for the first time in the world, the exclusive statements from the parents and friends of Madeleine McCann, hours before and after the little girl disappeared. These highly impacting and chilling statements render Kate and Gerry’s innocence in their daughter’s disappearance clear, and point towards the window of the apartment where they were staying, as a key element in the famous disappearance.” in Telecinco website, on 10.04.2008Mr Abad launched a controversy of epic proportions, with consequences that would have been hard to imagine only days earlier.It took the British media only a couple of hours to release an avalanche of articles reporting on the “leak” by the Portuguese police, that allegedly had given Mr Abad copies of the McCanns’ early statements to the PJ, to be deliberately “exposed” exactly on the same day that the couple was visiting the European Parliament, "undermining" their campaign. One of the first articles that appeared online was from the Mirror, and it cited an array of “friends” of the couple, as well as the unavoidable Mr Mitchell:“Kate and Gerry have been utterly honest and utterly open with the police and all of their statements from the moment that Madeleine was taken. The very fact that the comment from Madeleine is now in the public domain is entirely because they themselves told the police about it at the time. It is more than curious that this comment, taken in isolation and out of context, that has been in the police file for some 11 months, should now emerge on the very day that they are in Brussels trying to improve children's welfare and child safety. They would be more than interested to know if the Portuguese justice ministry will now demand an internal review of the police investigation to get to the bottom of how this material emerged in the way it has, on the day it has.” in The Mirror, 10.04.2008On the 11th, Mr Mitchell was in full combat mode, going as far as stating live on Sky News that he knew what the PJ was "up to":“We are not happy and the gloves are off.” in Sky News, 11.04.2008, Video hereIn an unprecedented move, the Polícia Judiciária, which had endured all sorts of humiliating, degrading remarks from the British media without uttering a word to defend its reputation, or that of its officers, released a press note from its National Directory, four days after the scandal broke:“At the end of last week, the Spanish television station Telecinco broadcast a news piece that reported that they had enjoyed exclusive access to alleged statements from the McCann couple to the "investigators" into the disappearance of the underage child, Madeleine. Based on this news piece, the spokesman of this couple, Clarence Mitchell, expressed publicly, to several media, the certainty that the Polícia Judiciária had been responsible for its publication. The Polícia Judiciária clarifies that it is entirely false that the contents of the news piece reproduces matter that is part of the inquiry, which is under judicial secrecy.On the other hand, the Polícia Judiciária cannot fail to lament the baseless intervention of the spokesman, especially at a moment when significant diligences to the investigation were being carried out.” in Polícia Judiciária’s website, 14.04.2008Now, the fact is, the Polícia Judiciária could, potentially, have leaked the information to Mr Abad.There would have been two possibilities:a) To source the information from Kate and Gerry McCann’s initial statements, which mentioned that Madeleine had told them that the twins had been crying, and never cited the actual sentence that had been spoken by the missing child; orb) The officers that attended Rachael Mampilly’s questioning, on the previous afternoon, could have called Mr Abad and instructed him to act accordingly. The timing is feasible. They would, of course, have nothing to offer Mr Abad apart from an oral reproduction of what Rachael had said under questioning.The only problem is, Rachael didn’t say much. The already anecdotal inability of the Tapas Seven to produce a single fluid, coherent sentence, makes it impossible for anyone without previous knowledge of the matter, to make much sense of her mention of the crying incident. Transforming the confusing half sentences that Rachael had said about the matter, into the following, requires more than a bit of imagination:“Crime reporter Nacho Abad, read out in Spanish an excerpt of the statement he said Kate had given Portuguese police. He said: "While we were having breakfast, Maddie said, 'Mummy, why didn't you come when we were crying last night?' "Gerry and I spoke for a couple of minutes and agreed to keep a closer watch over the children.” in The Sun, 10.04.2008I have no doubts in saying that none of the statements that were made public, in the official case files, contains anything that matches the above citation.There is only one possible source for the above mentioned ‘statement’, which seems to be a complete fabrication, based on facts that had only been superficially mentioned the day before, in Leicester, and 11 months earlier, in Portimão.The very same source that, despite feigning for the PJ its availability to take part in the upcoming reconstruction, which was to take place in May, had absolutely no interest in its fulfilment – and didn’t bother to conceal the fact, either:“Portuguese detectives want the McCanns to go to the Algarve for a reconstruction but the couple’s lawyers are concerned about being summoned back to Portugal.” in The Telegraph, on 10.04.2008The friends would ultimately be responsible for the reconstruction flop, as one after another, they informed the PJ that they would not be attending. Nobody can actually state that the McCann couple refused to attend the reconstruction; merely that the re-enactment would have been incomplete without the presence of their friends. And how terribly that is true.So, did Madeleine McCann cry for her daddy on Tuesday night, for over an hour? Did she cry on Wednesday? Did she cry at all?I suppose that, like so many other details in this case, this question will have to remain a matter of personal opinion, rather than fact. Whom we choose to believe has made an enormous difference in the manner how we individually perceive the Maddie case.What I don’t think anyone can refute is the fact that the manner in which this story was broken to the public – once again, involving Spanish ‘resources’ at a time when Método 3 was still employed by the McCanns, thus placing the source of the ‘leak’ conveniently outside the PJ’s jurisdiction – was actually a rather clumsy attempt to turn a negative fact that would, sooner or later, become public anyway, into something that would ‘work’ in favour of the McCanns, painting them as victims of a conniving Polícia Judiciária.After all, the PJ had taken all sorts of ridicule and abuse, lying down, for almost a year.But what it did, was to reinforce my personal belief that Mr Mitchell is capable of anything, including lying, manipulating and scheming against the legitimate police force of a sovereign country, to defend his clients’ image. Because according to the data that is publicly available, that is precisely what he did, in this case.I’m haunted by the sound of a crying child, tonight.Read more: http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/08/crying-incident.html#ixzz0Oy8SafnW Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

19 Aug 2009

The PuppetMcMasters are sick of seedy ugly little paedos in their McMedia show and have now set their sights on glamourous millionaires, once more, having been deserted by most of them for some strange reason in September 2007. But I think they have a strange way of enlisting, ahem, support. Meanwhile as one can see, Kate and Gerry continue to dream of the Great Barrier Reef and some fantastic yacht..ah unrequited dreams, how sad. Kate is also wondering whether just the botox really cuts it.. JUSTICE FOR MADDIE XX

August 16, 2009Maddie: the failures of the private detectives - IOL Portugal Diário

British press doesn’t forgive the lost lead of Barcelona

The private detectives that were hired by Kate and Gerry McCann to try to find the little girl that disappeared in Praia da Luz in May 2007 are under huge pressure from the British press, that doesn’t forgive them the failures while investigating a lead.

That lead was related to an Australian woman, “a Victoria Beckham look-alike”, that British tourists spotted in agitation at the Marina of the Olympic Port in Barcelona, waiting for a child, three days after Maddie disappeared.

The head of the private investigation, David Edgar, even presented a photofit and revealed that, in Australia, a woman had told the police that she knows the woman that was seen in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the lead led to nothing.

The Mail on Sunday doesn’t forgive the detectives and lists their failures: “They didn’t speak to anyone who works at the restaurant near the spot where the woman was seen. They didn’t speak to the port authorities about the boats’ arrivals and departures. They didn’t speak to anyone who was at the bar where the woman was seen, later, having a drink.”

The list continues, with the British press recalling that, if it wasn’t for the journalists, the investigators wouldn’t have heard about the arrival of a luxury yacht shortly after Madeleine’s disappearance, and that there was no contact with the British diplomats in Spain, or with the authorities in Barcelona.

“We are not above criticism and I take responsibility for any shortcomings”, said David Edgar.

So why did Madeleine McCann detectives ask so few questions after major breakthrough?By Tom Worden, Martin Delgado and Andrew ChapmanLast updated at 1:25 AM on 16th August 2009Comments (69) Add to My Stories Missing: Madeleine McCann vanished in May 2007Private detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine McCann faced questions last night after a Mail on Sunday investigation revealed apparent shortcomings in chasing a ‘strong lead’.

The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a ‘significant’ development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old.At a Press conference in London, lead investigator David Edgar appealed for help in finding a ‘bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’ whom a British tourist saw looking agitated outside a dockside restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine disappeared.Retired Cheshire Detective Inspector Mr Edgar said it was possible that Madeleine had been smuggled into the Spanish port by yacht from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, where she vanished on May 3, 2007.

The agitated woman, thought to be Australian, made a remark to the tourist which suggested she was waiting for the arrival of a child.

Mr Edgar, 52, told the 50 journalists from several countries: ‘It’s a strong lead. Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by this point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.’

As a result of his appeal for information and the issuing of an e-fit image of the woman, the search switched to Australia, where a woman in Sydney made a statement to police claiming to know the identity of the mystery female seen in Barcelona, although this apparently came to nothing.

More...McCanns to sue over leaflet distributed in their OWN VILLAGE blaming them for Madeleine's disappearance

The Mail on Sunday, however, has established that members of Mr Edgar’s team who had visited Barcelona:

Failed to speak to anyone working at the seafood restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen at 2am.Failed to ask the port authority about movement of boats around the time Madeleine disappeared.Failed to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV.Knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished until told by British journalists, who gave them the captain’s mobile phone number.

Failed to interview anyone at a nearby dockside bar where, according to Mr Edgar, the mystery woman was later seen drinking.Failed to ask British diplomats in Spain for advice before or during the visit.Also, Spanish police could not confirm that they had been contacted by the British investigators.Last night Mr Edgar said: ‘We are not above criticism and I take responsibility for any shortcomings. If somebody has not done what they should have done, that’s my job to deal with that.’Conversation: The bar belonging to Jose Luiz Lopez where the key conversation between a tourist and an Australian woman allegedly took placeHe was hired by Kate and Gerry McCann after Portuguese authorities shelved their investigation last year.According to the Find Madeleine Fund website, ‘the majority of the fund money has been and continues to be spent on investigative work to help to find Madeleine’.

The McCanns, doctors living in Rothley, Leicestershire, originally hired Barcelona-based detective agency Metodo 3 to look for Madeleine in 2007 as they were convinced that Portuguese police had given up the search.

Metodo 3 reportedly charged £50,000-a-month and its director, Francisco Marco, was criticised after making a series of boasts about his team’s ability to find Madeleine.

In December 2007, he caused a sensation by claiming he knew who had kidnapped her and hoped to have her home by Christmas.

Metodo 3’s six-month contract ran out in January 2008, although it has continued to help with the search.

The Mail on Sunday’s inquiry by a Spanish-speaking reporter in Barcelona last week has exposed worrying gaps in the British detectives’ strategy, including failure to question several people who might have vital information.Appeal: Clarence Mitchell, left, and David Edgar with their e-fit of the 'Victoria Beckham lookalike'Jose Luis Lopez, owner of the El Rey de la Gamba restaurant where themystery woman was seen, said: ‘The private detectives did not make any enquiries at my restaurant.

‘I am almost always here when the restaurant is open and my staff would have informed me if anyone had approached them about such an important matter. You are the first person to ask about this Australian woman.’

The manager of the bar next door, Kennedy’s Irish Sailing Club, where the woman was later seen drinking, said: ‘You are the first person to ask about this Australian woman or the Madeleine case. If someone came into the bar asking questions about Madeleine, I would hear about it very quickly.’

Barcelona port director Joan Guitart said: ‘Nobody has been here asking questions about Madeleine or this Australian woman. This is the first I have heard about any possible link to the port. We would be happy to help the investigation in any way possible.’Riddle: Was Madeleine taken to Barcelona marina?A senior port authority worker added: ‘There are several security cameras monitoring the port but we have not been approached about footage from the night in question.

‘The footage is not available, as it was over two years ago that this conversation is said to have taken place. But I would have expected anyone carrying out the investigation to at least have asked about it.’

A source at the British Embassy in Madrid said: ‘The detectives did not inform us or the consulate in Barcelona that they were coming to Spain, nor request any assistance in their investigation.’Jewellery designer Hannah Tait, 35, from London, who lives on a 34ft yacht yards from El Rey de la Gamba, said: ‘This place is like a small village so news travels very fast.

Nobody has been here asking about Madeleine or the Australian woman.

‘The first I heard was when I read about this on the internet. If someone had been investigating something so important here in the port, I would have heard about it.’

A Barcelona-based private detective with more than 20 years’ experience of missing persons cases said: ‘I cannot understand why the Madeleine detectives would have released this story and e-fit to the public without first making their own investigation in the port.

‘It beggars belief that they did not even speak to the owner of the restaurant or the port authorities.’

Identified: The Mail on Sunday discovered Rhonda Wyllie's yacht Willpower was in the marina at the vital time in 2007One of the most significant pieces of information about a possible Barcelona connection to Madeleine’s disappearance was uncovered by British journalists.

Later, The Mail on Sunday gained access to port records for the key dates of May 6 and 7, 2007.

They revealed that nine boats arrived in the marina in the 48-hour period, only one of which was unfamiliar to harbour authorities.

It was the £6million Sunseeker powerboat Willpower, owned by the Australian multi-millionairess Rhonda Wyllie.

When the then captain of the boat was eventually found, he said he had not been approached by any British detectives.Although he has since been contacted by Mr Edgar’s team, the investigators are in the embarrassing position of having to explain why it was left to reporters to discover the boat’s presence in Barcelona and trace its former captain.

There is no suggestion that Mrs Wyllie, widow of property tycoon Bill Wyllie, is connected in any way with Madeleine’s disappearance.

The Barcelona stage of the inquiry was led by Mr Edgar’s assistant, former Merseyside Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley, and an interpreter.

Mr Cowley, 57, is sole director of Alpha Investigation Group, based in Flintshire, North Wales.

He declined to discuss the details of his visit to Barcelona.

Asked last night why Mr Cowley and his colleague had not spoken to the port authorities, Mr Edgar said: ‘My instructions were that they couldn’t get through security at the marina at the time. I’ve got to take that at face value. We are a small team. We are dealing with finite resources and will have to manage with that.’

He said Mr Cowley’s company had no connection with the Madeleine investigation. ‘I am employed by the McCann family and I pick my staff,’ he added.Madeleine was nearly four when she disappeared from a holiday flat while her parents dined with friends in a nearby restaurant.

Last night the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: ‘The private investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance is being conducted entirely professionally and thoroughly under the direction of Dave Edgar.In the dark: Jose Luiz Lopez, the bar owner who was not spoken to by private detectives‘Upon receipt of the new witness information, two members of the investigative team travelled to Barcelona to conduct preliminary inquiries during a brief initial visit.

‘This included identifying the exact marina where the witness had been and all relevant locations within it. At that stage, the precise bar involved had not been identified by the witness. Nevertheless, inquiries were conducted at a number of bars, with staff members being interviewed.‘However, not all of the bars were open during the investigators’ visit. Because of the transient nature of bar work, it was also found that many of the workers who were spoken to were not present at the marina in May 2007.

'Other relevant personnel in the area were also interviewed, although we will notdiscuss the detail of who was spoken to for operational reasons.

‘The information, once gathered, including photographs, was brought back to the UK for witness confirmation. Both British and Portuguese police were kept fully informed of the investigators’ visit to Spain.

‘The news conference was then held for the simple reason that public assistance was needed once the e-fit had been drawn up from the witness account. The public appeal does not preclude further enquiries being conducted in Barcelona as appropriate.’

He declined to say how much the private detectives were being paid, adding: ‘We will not discuss contractual matters concerning the investigation costs nor the investigator remuneration.’

Hate campaign: A leaflet blames Madeleine McCann's parents for her disappearanceThe parents of Madeleine McCann were last night said to be devastated by a hate campaign suggesting they were responsible for their daughter’s disappearance.A leaflet entitled ‘Ten reasons to suggest that Madeleine McCann was not abducted’ was distributed to 10,000 residents of the village where they live and the surrounding area.A source told MailOnline the couple intend to pursue legal action and may even bring in the police.It was even sent to residents of the street in Rothley, Leicestershire, where Kate and Gerry McCann, both doctors, live with their four-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.The leaflet was not delivered to the McCanns’ home.The Madeleine Foundation, which distributed the leaflet, was set up by former lawyer Tony Bennett, 60, who has previously tried and failed to bring a private prosecution against the couple for child neglect.He and his supporters have produced a 64-page anti-McCann book entitled ‘What really happened to Madeleine McCann? Sixty reasons to suggest that she was not abducted’.Like the leaflet, it is emblazoned with a picture of the missing girl, who was aged three when she disappeared from her parents’ holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.The leaflet says her parents’ version of events on the night she disappeared is a ‘sheer impossibility’. It suggests it is more likely that Madeleine died in the apartment and that they covered up her death.Enlarge Devastated: Kate and Gerry McCann are aid to be considering legal action over the Madeleine Foundation leaflet campaignResidents of Rothley last night expressed outrage at the leaflet, an extract of the book, which calls for the case to be reopened.One resident, Patricia Ball, said: ‘It sent a shiver down my spine. I did not like it at all, it had a nasty feel about it.

More...Millionaire mother and daughter 'unable to help' with hunt for Madeleine McCann‘There is still a candle on the green, so every time you go into the centre of Rothley, you pass the candle and it always reminds you of Madeleine.’A copy of the original book was sent to the McCanns’ home several months ago, causing them great upset.A family friend said the couple were were ‘devastated’ by the campaign and may sue for libel.Their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said: ‘We do not wish to dignify the actions of the so-called Madeleine Foundation with any response. We do feel it is important, however, to make the general public aware that the foundation has no connection whatsoever with our family or those helping us find Madeleine or any law enforcement agencies.‘We strongly believe the actions of this organisation do not have Madeleine’s best interests at heart. If anything, it is hampering our efforts to find Madeleine and achieve justice on her behalf.’Last year, the McCanns expressed anger at the foundation, which they described as a fee-paying club dedicated to blaming them for Madeleine’s disappearance – members pay £10 to join.Mr Bennett’s attempt to bring a private prosecution against the couple two years ago was thrown out by Leicester magistrates on the grounds that they had no jurisdiction over the case because she disappeared abroad.Mr Bennett said at the time: ‘We are a group of people who want to get to the truth of what happened to Madeleine.’

What Did Happen to Madeleine McCann

Professor David Barclay, Prominent Forensic Investigator told Martin Brunt of Sky News:There are two options:1) She came to harm at the hands of friends or familyor2) She was taken by a passing paedophileHe went on.. both are really unlikely, but we know she is gone

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE AGAINST US, DID YOU HEAR THAT?

WHERE WERE YOU MUMMY/NASTY BLOGGERS

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Don't have nightmares

THE MCCANNS TOOTHY AND DELIGHTED GRIN

AS THEY PROMOTE THEIR MONEY PEDDLING MADDIE BOOK JUNE 2011 NEVER TOO LATE FOR A GOOD CASHIN

From the Portuguese Police File - seen by a witness loitering with intent....

What a great e-fit Gerry

WHOOPS GERRY'S MASK SLIPPED

HE FOUND IT AGAIN..GERRY THE EVANGELIST

WITH A BEATIFIC GRIN OUTSIDE THE WHITEHOUSE SOFTLY HUMMING "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" C. July 2007 when dreams and fantasies were at their zenith

12.5.07 ECSTATIC ON MADDIES BIRTHDAY AS TENS OF THOUSANDS ROLL IN .... £260 PER HOUR

THE SAME DATE THE FUND WAS CREATED, YES MADDIE'S BIRTHDAY

.After a single dose of COCAINE there may be enlarged (dilated) pupils & pale cool skin...

and here is another one

a dead ringer for Gerry's mate Russell O'Brien, Missing from the table when Maddie went missing No wonder the McCanns wanted to release another load of e-fitups

Nanday enjoys wrecking my plant

but I love him!

LAST IMAGE OF MADELEINE ACCORDING TO KATE MCCANN TAKEN ON THE MORNING OF TUESDAY 1 MAY 2007

THAT NIGHT MADDIE WAS SOBBING PITIFULLY DADDY DADDY, TWO NIGHTS LATER THEY REPORT HER MISSINGTemperature at the time only about 17-20, so how come that "sunburn"? Is it fake suntan cream hiding bruising to her arm but they could not be bothered to do her legs. Notice the pure white hand, very odd! Even more odd, why feature the red dress picture, made up and aged about two and ignore this genuine last pic? This couple even lied and said she only answers to Madeleine when know she actually answers to Maddie. Who believes they actually want her to be "found"?

My view in Brief..and the best post to this blog IMO

Viv, regarding Mrs Fenn on the night Madeleine was crying for over an hour, which stopped when she heard the parents return. As we have said before, could someone have been leaving, but could someone have been leaving with Madeleine. Perhaps Madeleine was drugged, which would account for the crying to stop suddenly, and removed.

This blog does not pursue any agenda, I do not pretend to be Pro or Anti McCann and I most certainly do not sell books or ask anyone for cash, it is just my search for the truth the way I see it and an answer to all the lies and spin we have to endure on this case - often pure and deliberate rubbish that is written by many on blogs and forums to mask the truth brainswash people to believe the unbelievable and of course, cashin.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence the McCanns were involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, but there is no satisfactory evidence that confirms she died in the apartment. As the Portuguese Prosecutor has just pointed out, they could have been charged with kidnapping and trafficking Madeleine. Goncalo Amaral has behaved in an unconventional way for an ex police officer to expose Kate and Gerry McCann and there is no doubt that as parents, there is something incredibly unconventional about them!

People see what Gerry McCann wants them to see, but which cannot be proved against him, it is his mirage to feed his Fund. Maybe a few police officers, early to the case, also saw it his way. But what he, his friends and his wife really did will be their undoing.

Justice for Maddie, The Twins and all exploited and abused little children whether they are dead or alive.

Detailed procedures on how UK investigate Complex Child Abuse Cases

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SCARY HUH!

Too much pupil Gez...

ANOTHER LUDICROUS GAFF

It is true that we have requested a meeting with the prime minister to show him the strength of our case, to explain Kate and Gerry's innocence and yet all we've been offered is a medium-level-consular meeting, which we rejected.